


all things to dust return but you keep on

by Anonymous



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: (not ciri or any canon characters), Angst, Child Death, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Survivor Guilt, Trial Of The Grasses (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29168019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: As they clear the table, Ciri says, “I haven’t seen any graves here.”It takes Geralt a moment to understand, until Vesemir says, “There are none,” in that same hollow voice and he realizes all at once what she means. The seven out of ten. The witchers who weren’t.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 40
Collections: Anonymous





	all things to dust return but you keep on

**Author's Note:**

> see end notes for cw  
> [title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1A4Uo-Sl1o)

They’re having breakfast in the crumbling remains of the Great Hall when Ciri remarks, “It’s so quiet everywhere.” It’s only half-intelligible around her mouthful of broth until she swallows and continues, “So empty. I can’t imagine other kids here.” 

“You’re the first one in decades,” Vesemir tells her. “After Kaer Morhen was attacked, we stopped taking in new trainees.”

“But they _were_ here?” she presses. “Other children, like me?”

“There are no other children like you,” Geralt says, and Vesemir chuckles in agreement as he tears off a chunk of bread.

“They were here,” the old wolf answers. “A few dozen boys at a time, usually. Training, studying, preparing.” 

In a matter-of-fact tone, Ciri says, “Preparing for the Trial of the Grasses.”

The change in Vesemir is subtle. His smile doesn’t drop an inch, he doesn’t move, but somewhere behind his eyes Geralt sees the shutters come down, hears the hollow ring in his voice as he responds. “Some of them, yes. Others prepared to receive their medallions, or for the Path beyond the walls.”

Ciri nods, sips her soup. Geralt thinks that’s the end of it.

But later, as they clear the table, she says, “I haven’t seen any graves here.”

It takes Geralt a moment to understand, until Vesemir says, “There are none,” in that same hollow voice and he realizes all at once what she means. The seven out of ten. The witchers who weren’t. 

“We burned the bodies,” Vesemir says. “Ground’s usually too frozen to dig very far down, and… the mutagens don’t leave the body after death. We couldn’t risk necrophages— ”

“ _Vesemir_ ,” Geralt interrupts, but Ciri doesn’t seem upset. 

“Could you show me where?” she asks. 

It isn’t what he expects from the girl who’s only recently been able to sleep through the night without screaming herself awake from nightmares of death and destruction. “Why?” Geralt asks, confused. 

“They were my age, right?” When Vesemir nods, she purses her lips, eyes tracing across the tabletop as she says, “I think…. If… if it were me… I think I’d want someone to visit every now and again.” 

Vesemir and Geralt share a look over her head. Instinctively, he wants to say no, but. He thinks of the ones she’s lost, the ones she’s loved that have no graves, no place to go and mourn, and it feels selfish to deny her this little thing. 

“I’ll take you,” he says.

*

The spot isn’t far. East from what remains of the outer courtyard wall to a tight path snaking up the side of the mountain. It’s treacherous going at first, sharp switchbacks and twists against a sheer rock face and a thousand-foot drop. As they go, though, it widens out a little, and he feels more comfortable letting Ciri wander ahead and pick some of the wildflowers that grow along the trail.

The path seems narrower than he remembers, but then he supposes he was smaller back then, too. He and Eskel both, shouldering the heavy, awkward, cloth-wrapped bundles with muscles still itching from the mutations, shaky from the memory of pain. Four times each they’d made the trip up this path, up to the pyre to drop the burdens from their backs before turning around and heading down again to retrieve another shrouded, too-familiar weight lying in the room below the keep that stunk of rot and filth, sweat and shit, vomit, death—

Around another bend the path levels out, broadens onto a bare stone ledge. The only vegetation is a gnarled, stubby little tree clinging to the edge of the cliff. Even the scraggly mountain grasses have long since burned away. 

Ciri steps out onto the stone with her little fistful of flowers and turns in a slow circle before looking back to Geralt. “What were their names?” she asks. 

“I— I don’t remember all of them,” he admits, and it feels like a failure but she only shrugs. 

“The ones you remember, then.”

“Stepan,” he rasps around the lump of his heart in his throat. “Wymar. Markis. Kaspar. Lutz.” 

It’s been almost a century since he’s spoken those names aloud, he realizes. Separated by time but not space. They reflect off the mountain face just as they did the last time he’d said them, here, as the bodies they’d belonged to rose up in smoke and embers, crumbled into ash. He’d struggled for breath as they stood vigil, told himself it was the haze in the air but known it wasn’t. 

It wasn’t, how could it be, when it had already been choking him for days? Ever since he’d floundered to the shallow end of his delirium and heard the masters saying how well he was reacting to the changes as the boy next to him screamed for his mother, shuddered, vomited up blood from his insides hemorrhaging, and went suddenly still and vacant. Since they’d pried his jaw open, forced more stinking poisonous bile down his throat and into his veins and improbably, impossibly, he’d clawed his way through it all to the surface again only to find himself made anew in a room full of corpses. Since he’d looked across the room at Eskel and realized _only us_. 

It wasn’t smoke that had choked him, it was shame. Twisting in his gut, growing until it filled his chest, until he couldn’t breathe for the sick, guilty feeling in every empty space inside of him. Eight boys reduced to ash and him still standing, and for what? What made him worthy to be the boy breathing and not the one on the fire? Why—

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Ciri says. She’s standing near the ledge, looking outwards as she plucks petals from the flowers and lets the wind catch them. Far below them both lies the forest, spread over the valley in a patchwork of gray and green, and the river cutting its wayward path through it. The rising sun behind the mountains makes the peaks glow as if they’ve been edged in gold. 

Geralt takes a deep breath, then another. The air is crisp and clean, no trace of smoke. The petals flutter in the breeze, white and red, blue and orange, carried up and out and away. 

“Yes,” he says. “It is.” 

**Author's Note:**

> cw for:  
> *descriptions of the torture and death of children  
> *mentions of bodily fluids including blood, vomit, and feces
> 
> if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to leave a comment and i'll do my best to clarify.  
> thank you for reading!


End file.
